“You are not to see me here again in a hurry,” he confided aloud to the banisters and steps, when he had descended to the first floor. Then he laughed to himself, and tripped gaily down the remaining flight.
There was no hesitation now in his mood. He walked briskly back through the square, and then down Waterloo Place, till he came to the Guards’ Memorial. He moved round this to the front, and looked up at one of the three bronze Guardsmen with the confident air of familiarity. He knew this immutable, somber face under every shifting aspect of light and shadow; he had stared at the mantling greatcoat and the huge bearskin of this hero of his a hundred times. The very first day of his arrival in London he had made the acquaintance of this statue, and had started, dazed and fascinated, at the strange resemblance it suggested. Thus his boy-father must have looked, with the beard and the heavy dress of the Russian winter. The metal figure came to mean to him more than all London beside. In the sad, strong, silent countenance which gazed down upon him he read forever the tragedy that gripped his heartstrings. Forever Honor, standing aloft, held the laurel wreath poised high above the warrior’s head—immovable in the air, never to descend to touch its mark. Christian had seen this wreath always through moist eyes.
This morning, for a wonder, no tearful impulse came to him as he looked upward. The impassive face was as gravely fine as ever, but its customary effect of pathos was lacking. There even seemed in its sightless eyes a latent perception of Christian’s altered mood. He lifted his hat soberly and saluted the statue.
Toward the Strand now he made his way, walking blithely, and humming to himself. He could not forbear to smile at a policeman he passed in front of St. Martin’s. Two elderly and much bewrapped cabmen stood stamping their feet beside a shelter, and they pointed toward their ridiculous old horses and battered growlers as he came along, with an air that moved him to glee. He gave them a shilling to divide, and went on, conscious of a novel delight in himself and in the world at large.
The big clock showed it to be half-past five. There was no blue in the sky, but the mist of daybreak was abating, and the air was milder. Not a living creature was visible along the naked length of the Strand. At the end, the beautiful spire of St. Mary’s rose from the dim grays about its base, exquisite in tints and contour as an Alpine summit in the moment before sunrise.
A turning to the left opened to Christian, unexpectedly, a scene full of motion and color. He had not thought himself so near Covent Garden, but clearly this must be it. He walked up toward the busy scene of high-laden vans, big cart-horses and swarming porters, wondering why no sign of all this activity was manifest in the sleeping Strand below, barely a stone’s throw distant. He saw the glowing banks of flowers within, as he approached, and made toward them, sighing already with pleasure at the promise they held out to him.
He might have read in the papers that it was a backward and a grudging April, this year, in the matter of flowers. But to Christian, no memory of the exuberant South suggested any rivalry with this wonderful show of northern blossoms. Tulips and daffodils, amaryllis and azaleas, rhododendrons, carnations, roses—he seemed to have imagined to himself nothing like this before. He spent over an hour among them, in the end making numerous purchases. At each stall he gave an address—always the same—and exacted the pledge of delivery at eight o’clock.
At last he could in reason buy nothing more, and he went out to look about him. He found the place where the market-men take drinks at all hours, and food and coffee when nature’s sternest demands can be positively no longer disregarded—but it did not invite his appetite. Some further time he spent in gazing wondering at the vast walls of vegetables and fruit being tirelessly built up and pulled down again, pondering meanwhile the question whether he should breakfast before eight o’clock, or at some indefinitely later hour. He partially solved the problem at length by buying a small box of Algerian peaches, and eating them where he stood. Then some exceptionally fine bananas tempted him further, and he finished with a delicate little melon from Sicily.
How it carried him back to the days of his youth—this early morning fragrance of the fresh fruit! It was as if he were at Cannes again—only buoyant now, and happy, and oh, so free! And in his pocket he could feel whenever he liked the soft, munificent crackle of over four thousand francs! The sapphire Mediterranean had surely never been so lovely to his gaze as was now the dingy Strand below.
The laggard hour came round at last. He descended to Arundel Street, and discovered the house he wanted, and found just within the entrance two or three of the flower-laden porters awaiting his arrival, For the rest, the building seemed profoundly unoccupied. He led the way up to the third floor, and had the plants set down beside the locked door which bore the sign “Miss Bailey.” Other similarly burdened porters made their appearance in turn, till the narrow hallway looked like a floral annex to the Garden itself.